Sam's choices
by Prince of Leaves
Summary: One day after 'The Purge' Sam decides that he really couldn't care less about Dean this time, but should he leave Dean just yet? Dean forces him into making a decision they both might regret...again.
1. Chapter 1

'Here's lunch,' Dean threw Sam an apple, because that's what Dean had been doing since Sam's existence, throwing things to Sam. It could be anything, a teddy bear, car keys or his soul, and all Sam needed to do was catch. Recently, however, Sam wanted to throw something at his brother, preferably something that left an impact, like a broken nose.

'We're partners, not brothers,' Sam said coldly, so it could twist through Dean. Right now, he just didn't care. He hadn't slept well, then had decided to go for a long run at an unnaturally early hour, and had since spent the morning desperately researching for something that would free him from the bunker. The air had turned into stifling angst. They weren't talking to each other and everything was dull and worthless, especially hunting. The ordinary evil they sparred against seemed inconsequential, and he wasn't even desperate for revenge against certain angels.

He'd stopped being serious about the 'good fight, saving lives' all that jargon, a long time ago. For years, he'd survived because he'd had someone to fight for and now he didn't. It was ironic that their entire lives they'd fought valiantly against malicious creatures, and instead of going down heroically, they'd destroyed each other without any weapons. Sam felt as if night had crawled into his heart, and there was an endless darkness inside him, that could never be cracked by any hint of hope.

And the apple Dean had so carelessly thrown at him was a reminder of his last date with normality, when he'd gone out on a stroll to buy organic fruit, because that's what he wanted to do. Lately, he'd chosen nothing for himself. It almost felt as if he wasn't a person anymore, because people have intellect to decide on what they want to do, but he didn't. He was just an object, heaven's, hell's, the trial's, his brother's. He couldn't even die, because Dean had taken away all his free will.

'Team Free Will,' he thought, bitterly. There was nothing free about any of them, they were on a constant loop of trouble and torture, and Sam had been tricked right back into it. If he hadn't been deceived by Dean, he'd now be dead and wouldn't have any knowledge of 2014's saving a realm of the universe strategy. If he thought of it that way, he didn't have to help now. Angels, demons and his brother with that ridiculous mark he'd gotten burnt onto his arm and soul could cause maelstroms that cracked continents, but it wasn't his problem anymore.

Sam Winchester was exhausted and this was his choice.

The part that gnawed at him the most was that Dean had betrayed him. Dean never listened! Sure, it felt like something a teenage Sam would say to his dad, but Dean had done what he deemed best, instead of trusting a very grown up Sam to make his own decisions… Siblings were supposed to trust each other, and if Dean still refused to trust him after all the unbelievably absurd adversities they'd been through, as much as he hated it, logically they weren't family.

'Not brothers,' he said again, and threw the apple back to Dean, who caught in on reflex, because he was pretty sure Dean was stunned enough to otherwise let it fall and bruise.

He heard a zip close, and knew Dean had tugged his jacket collar over his ears, they way he did when he felt the world drop him off its shallow shores, and he had absolutely nowhere to go. A desperation so deep it became a being. Sam felt it tug at him, a yank to that invisible iron braid that bound the two of them together, so that he wanted to say something, anything, even ask for that worthless apple back, but he wouldn't, because he was making choices now, and letting Dean have his attention, was Dean taking away his choice.

'Sure, Sammy,' his brother replied, in that 'masking my true feelings with a childish candy-floss cheer' voice. It just infuriated Sam more, so he stomped off, slamming the door to his room, because he'd chosen to do that and it didn't matter how rude it was.

Nothing mattered, and it hurt.

~SPN~

By the next evening, the silence was ringing in Sam's bones, crawling up his skin, shoving a scream from his throat. His brother was never quiet. Even when they'd had a particularly dangerous argument, Dean always had a living clatter falling around him. The sound of guns clicking as they were oiled, hummed tunes, mutterings as he sorted through laundry, books snapped closed, sneezes that always seemed exaggeratedly loud, random chuckles that hung like questions and when he couldn't help it, 'you'll never guess what video I found, Sammy.' It had always reassured Sam and now that there was emptiness, as if Dean was a myth, the bunker seemed cavernous and haunted, and Sam wanted to run.

There was no reason to anymore, but he had to stay. He wanted to live and die. He wanted to gulp crisp, cold air and see his reflection in perfect apples. He wanted to have a photo of him and his mom, just like the one Dean had. Dean had looked at it so contentedly, with his smile lines suddenly lighter, his brow less furrowed, as if 'mom was mine, not Sam's' and even in that, Sam had felt that he hadn't had a choice. He wanted it all to go back to the start and he wanted so much that he could never have.

He wanted his brother to say something.

He shouldn't have to want him to though, because he was miffed with Dean and Dean had to know that and suffer the consequences of his repeatedly selfish decisions. Dean never learnt and worst of all, he didn't want to learn. Sam knew spells for almost everything, but he still hadn't found the elixir that reversed Winchester stubbornness.

If Dean couldn't change with his forgiveness, then maybe this time Dean would learn with his anger.

He'd gone out earlier, taking the Impala without asking Dean, because his brother didn't even like him enough to look at him anymore –which was a strange thing, because Sam was supposed to not want Dean to give him any attention, since all the attention had a misguided reaction at the end- and it wasn't as if he was eloping with a supermodel, he was just going out. Even at the coffee shop he couldn't concentrate on being normal and just getting a simple latte, because Dean had taken away his choice even in that.

It was all Dean's fault. Sam was either miffed at him or worried about him.

Oh, he wanted to hate his brother, but it was all getting tangled as it usually did, and he was beginning to feel that old guilt creep up into him when they were perilously close to, as Dean called it, 'throwing punches.'

He didn't want it to happen this soon. He didn't want them to like each other just yet.

Dean's silence was gnawing at him. The only time Dean was this quiet was when he went on a hunt, and even then, he'd mutter the entire time about why there were so many yucky monsters that needed to be ganked or that bugs from freaking alien jungles were crawling through his hair. So he had to be planning something, and Dean's personal plans always had something variously reckless about them. They mostly failed.

Oh, but it was his choice not to care, so he should forget about it.

Now it was past midnight and he was determinedly trying to watch the movie playing on his laptop, but he still couldn't concentrate. Finally, his brother strolled in, holding a folder in his hands. Sam hadn't seen him in hours.

'Found a case, Sammy,' said Dean nonchalantly, as if it was all so normal, when it wasn't. Why didn't his brother ever get that? It wasn't just another fight, this time it was serious and it would have disastrous consequences (he wasn't sure what yet) but of course Dean didn't even care.

'Great,' he coughed back, because he didn't know what else to do. He opened the folder, which had information of a curiously weird creature that was crawling through a damp forest a few hours away. Somehow, Dean had a knack of finding interesting cases easily. It used to irk him that Dad never acknowledged Dean's skill for it, but then Dad had that odd habit of not praising Dean enough for anything he ever did. It was like Dad deliberately did it and Sam still couldn't figure out why.

He couldn't figure out a lot of things now days, even though he used to think he was clever enough to know almost everything.

'What do you think?' Dean's voice was a static radio caught between Sam's thoughts.

'I'm not sure,' Sam replied vaguely. He didn't care about the case. He was trying to peek at his brother's expression without making it blatantly obvious that he had to know what Dean thought of that conversation yesterday. Dean was slouched in a chair, feet on the table, his mind seemingly where it usually was, in a valley between the consequential and the frivolous.

It all seemed less claustrophobic suddenly, as if someone had opened a door and a moon ray had slipped in. It was Dean's breathing, Sam realized, the lulls in it, as if there was a tune in it that he'd memorized, that he'd always know. When he was away from Dean he imagined that he breathed less fluently, like he needed an inhaler.

'Dude,' said Dean, 'I think you'll like it. It has your usual favorites, squelchy leaves, eerie sounds, stupid hikers.'

Sam noticed something surprising about his brother. Dean usually wore a lot of layers, and when he was upset, he put on more. It was as if he was trying to hide in his own self. Another thing he'd done since forever. So many things had changed of Dean, but so many of the little habits had stayed the same, especially the one he resolutely bound himself to, 'save Sam.'

Tonight, Dean was wearing a t-shirt. He couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

'Good night Sammy,' the words floated and fell into Sam's palms. He clasped them. He wanted to whine and tell Dean to stay, because he'd just begun to breathe easier, but it was too late and then too still, and it occurred to him that he was always thinking of Dean as 'brother'.

~SPN~

**_Then_**

Whenever John Winchester returned to the motel after an adventurous quest, his young sons, their faces still so effortlessly innocent, would exclaim jubilantly, 'Dad, we love you!'

And John would reply, 'I love you more.'

This continued until they discovered that an 'I love you' wasn't for teenagers and the custom faded into the canvas of childhood. One day, when all three of them were going on adventurous quest, Sam and Dean unintentionally said together, 'love you dad.'

And John replied quietly, as if it was a wounded memory, 'love you more.'

Later, when Dean wasn't there, John had told Sam that back when Mary was still alive, she'd sit with a sleepy Dean and baby Sam in Dean's room at twilight, and they'd wait for him to come home from work. And when he walked in, Dean would say, holding Sam's fist as if to acknowledge the baby's opinion, 'dad, we love you!'

And John would happily reply, 'I love you more.'

Then Mary would cradle Sam closer to her and tighten her arm around Dean as he leaned into her side, and say, solemnly, 'I love you most.'

~SPN~

_**Now**_

Sam Winchester had grown up with guns. He probably identified gun oil as one of his first and most comforting scents and could've written a manual on a variety of them by the time he was ten. So a silencer couldn't mask the faint, almost imagined click that night and it woke him right up. At first, he thought someone was shooting at him and aimed his weapon at the invisible intruder. Then he snapped up and yelled 'Dean!'

He'd always held that word under his tongue, a talisman of his world. It didn't matter, something was going to hurt his brother and he needed to save him, anyway, anyhow, nothing mattered, just Dean.

When he pushed Dean's door open he thought of something he'd told Dean a long time ago, back when he was soulless. It was a technique he'd read about, where a single bullet placed at an exact spot beneath the ribs would severe a vessel and the person was sure to die very quickly. He'd said it with a smirk, because at that time it seemed quite efficient, effective and even kind of cool, but Dean had raised his eyebrows at him, like there was something seriously lacking in Sam's, well, existence.

He'd thought Dean was rude then to dismiss him like that, but now he wished he'd never told his brother about that nifty trick. Dean was on the floor and there was a web of blood in neat veins patterning the surface next to his t-shirt.

Sam felt like he was being strangled. The brother in him was rushing back through the blizzard of yesterday's lashing words, and the hunter in him almost tripped over Dean's legs, a hand on Dean's pulse, one falling to the wound at his brother's side.

'You're mean,' Sam mumbled, realizing he was breathing because Dean still was. Dean's breath was faint and hollow, but it sounded as if there were drumbeats across the walls, resonating through the skies, 'and you missed.'

He was thankful now that Dean hadn't paid enough attention to his tutorial.

Sam knew he should do something, but he didn't want to leave his barely conscious brother. He wanted to stay and hold onto Dean's heart and tell him that he could survive without him but not live, that he couldn't breathe without him, that he was so sorry.

A square of starchy white paper lay on Dean's knee. Sam picked it up, marring it's purity with bloody fingertips. Dean's long, lazy script seemed as true as his real voice, the one you heard before he could shroud it in deceiving accents.

'Sammy, I love you most'.

_Oh, brother._

Sam was faced with two striking choices. He could let Dean die or he could pick that bullet out and stitch him up with thread and tears.

'I'll be back in a second,' he whispered, and ran out.


	2. Chapter 2

The first aid kit is a Winchester heirloom. It's a relic from dad's marine days, and has defeated all sorts of enemies. It has neat compartments, filled with essentials that save a brother's life so he can live long enough to beg assistance from the weathered box once again. Blindfolded, Sam can find his way through the needles, gauze, butterfly stitches, antiseptic and painkillers. It's always been Dean's responsibility to keep the kit equipped and he's proud of how well his done it. It's not easy finding good drugstores in tiny towns or sourcing expensive medication.

Sam relied on Dean for it and neither of them gave it much thought.

That was before he smudged Dean's blood onto his sweatpants, the bathroom door and the light switch. He was panicking because he knew the kit was empty. It hadn't been refilled because Dean wasn't being reliable anymore. All the small essentials that you liked to think grew out of cupboards disappeared. Sam remembers Dean saying, 'I'm going out to get a few things we need' and before he missed it, there would rock salt and coffee again. Just like there was once Lucky Charms.

Dean always had it sorted. Now, Dean wasn't being Dean.

He swiped the dental floss to use as thread for stitching and grabbed the first aid from the shelf. His hands reached for a familiar tin box, they came back with something plastic and heavy. For a moment, Sam wanted to throw it across the room, a foreign creature latching onto his arms, until he saw it was a fancy new first aid kit and it was very full. Sam unlatched it hurriedly, grateful that he didn't need to use dental floss and found his favorite tweezers, the ones with the tiny light bulb attached to it, perfect for plucking out tiny bullets wedged in awkward places.

His brother had given him something before he even realized he needed it.

Dean was being Dean.

~SPN~

Dean's life was spiraling out of his side. Sam's memory was a rivulet of water, caught on soft moss and sharp rocks. He threaded the needle and remembered the first time he'd stitched up a neat cut in dad's leg. Dean would normally do it, but Dean was passed out in the backseat of the Impala. So it fell to Sam, who'd been practicing on the holes in his socks. He was relieved it wasn't Dean he had to stitch up on his first try. Dad's skin was dry and rough, emotionless.

However, a teenage Dean's skin was young and soft. Sam thought of the scattered freckles, stitching them up together like join the dots. He didn't like the scars that broke Dean's skin, imagined his brother's heart torn and the wounds he'd never be able to close. When dad wasn't there, tears would crease down Dean's cheeks and fall over Sam's fingers like stinging bites. Sam dealt with his emotions by being clinical about the procedure, and got through it.

Dean didn't manage it that well though. His stitching was perfectly fine, but his thoughts were unhinged and unruly. He hated stitching Sam up, didn't like to thread steel through his kid brother's skin, didn't like Sammy getting hurt, didn't want Sam's world to be scarred. He was supposed to protect his Sam, not let him bleed out in a map across the country. Sam would be composed, wince and say, 'thanks dude' while Dean left to swallow night air in wild gasps. Sam still doesn't think Dean is over it, he's just learnt to hide the hitches in his breath.

Sam feels like Dean now, trying to be a surgeon and not a brother. It's different this time because Dean's shot himself. Sam can't get over that. Dean doesn't want to die to save the world from its fifth apocalypse or to sacrifice himself so temperamental angels can be locked in heaven forever, but because he wants leave his brother. Sam's thinks of a starfish, letting its arms fall away from the slimy coral it's attached itself to with a tiny, wet click.

'You're not supposed to feel that way!' he whisper yells, words coughed out.

'Sammy,' Dean's mumble courses through him in a roller coaster rush; 'are you going to stitch me up or what?'

Then Dean isn't conscious anymore. Sam moves the sheet his held to staunch the blood flow, cleans the wound and cautiously picks out the bullet. Then he starts stitching, thinking about the 'or what'. The question is logical. It presents Sam with opportunities.

He can stop stitching. He can cut out the threads and leave Dean here, with his black t-shirt. It would simply erase all his life's complexities. There would be a world waiting out there, a world he'd left so long ago, and now he would discover it, find the magic of normality and happiness.

When those terrible trials were taking their toll on him, everything around him seemed perpetually dead. He had wanted to die because he felt cold. When Dean said 'I need you know that,' he'd felt as if his heart had been jump started. He could see textures, when before there were only shadows, Dean's threadbare bandanna around his swollen palm, the Impala door when he knocked his elbow against it and the angels falling. For those few seconds before he blacked out, he found life.

~SPN~

Sam has been toying with a conundrum for a few weeks. He'd felt so healthy recently, it gave him a jolt every time he realized he could do hardcore training again, win at a wild knife fight and the weirdest bit, be stronger than Dean. Dean was wildly powerful when it came to being violent, but he couldn't beat Sam at anything athletic. It felt good, to win again. It made him feel like he wanted to live. And not the hunting life either, but he knows what that requires.

Still, he doesn't stop stitching and ends of with a neat knot. Sam's an artist at turning gapping raw wounds into embroidered scars. He lifts his brother's damp t-shirt, to sponge away the blood, but then he cuts it away with a scissor from his new first aid kit.

Why does Dean have so many scars? It makes him want to panic again.

He knows most of Dean's scars, but he hasn't seen his brother's pale skin for a long time. There are the cuts he's tidily stitched up and then there's the others, gashes that haven't healed well, something that has ripped right across his chest, with a jagged weapon. He wants to kill Dean for not having told him. This isn't natural.

The mark is the strangest hue of color Sam has seen. It's the red of dawn with a zenith sky. He doesn't know what to do about it, but he's pretty sure those scars on Dean's chest are because of it, unless his being hunting werewolves the size of monster trucks every night. Inherently, he wants to hurt the person who did this to his brother. Sam doesn't care who it is, he'll make him suffer. He knows stuff, Sam Winchester, you don't test him.

Why does he even bother about Dean though? He's supposed to let him die, so he can get on without him. If Dean's dead, the hunting life will be wrapped up do easily and nothing unsavory will have to happen again.

Brothers help to ease each other's pain. Sam can simply shoot Dean in his chest and save him from the ache and trauma that occurs after a bullet wound. That's what siblings do. Help each other.

The thought it so astounding, he wipes his eyes with the back of his bloody fingertips.

Stop caring, he tells himself stubbornly, stop caring about the bad excuse of a brother you have. Why, he's not even a brother. He's a liar, a serial killer, a reckless idiot and a lot worse. He doesn't trust you, why should you save him? Actually, it wouldn't even be killing him, since Dean wanted to kill himself. It's not right for Sam to interrupt Dean's wishes.

Sam doesn't like the way this internal conversation is going. He wanted to die, because he didn't see any objective in him living, but now Dean killed himself, and he's not letting him go. He can't let him go.

He doesn't know it, because even though he's been arguing with his confronting thoughts, he's also reassured Dean the entire time. Telling him he'll be okay, it's just one more stitch, you can sleep after this properly and there we go, it's already done, you're always so brave big brother. That's all Sam's heart.

'You wake up and we're going to have the longest, most torturous talk of your life,' Sam shakes his head, miffed, knowing that they'll never talk, but he's going to get some answers out of Dean anyway he can, that's for sure.

There's an old, sketchily healed scar across Dean's shoulder. It's one Dean's sewed up himself. It was always like this with Dean. Dean's never ever cared about himself, and the 'ever' is a fact. If he could help it, he'd probably staple his cuts closed, but perhaps his vanity stopped him.

Sam had always wanted Dean to help him, because Dad was too abrupt about it 'man up, kid' and Dean was cautious and comforting. There was nothing Dean could do wrong, when it came to making Sam well. Everybody else does everything wrong, Sam concludes, fathers, nurses, doctors, girlfriends or angels, it doesn't matter, nobody measures up to making Sam feel better.

It feels like an awkward oxymoron, he's attesting to Dean's ability to help him, but then he's angry to be alive because Dean did something ridiculously terrible and he tells himself he won't forgive Dean, their over now and there's no going back.

How can you forget your brother?

At Stanford with Jessica, the best time of his life, he tried so desperately to let Dean go. He wanted to yank the memory of Dean out of him, stamp it shut between a 1000 page volume, wrangle it out with his wet shirts, let an avalanche crush it, hide in between the stone bricks in a secret passage way, he'd do anything, everything to let it go.

He couldn't. Dean stayed with him all the time, when he got the highest score, found the best tasting cherry pie, could talk to a girl without stuttering, carving complicated symbols into drawers and basically existing, Dean was always there. He hated his brother for never leaving him alone and he loved him so much for it too.

'Sammy…' Dean's lips are white, corpse like. He stays in disrupted alertness long enough for Sam to give him pain medication and warm water.

Dean's going to yell at him later, tell him that he should've just let him die, because Dean doesn't care. He'll itch at the mark like he wants to twist his arm out and Sam will stare at him impassively and act like nothings the matter with his frenzied eyed brother. They've been doing that for weeks, both hiding their gravity defying worry.

And throughout it all, Sam knows he'll never be sorry for saving Dean from himself.

He needs to tell Dean something important.

The paper crushed in Sam's hand is more important to him than a fought over, ancient tablet. That was an object, it didn't make his life better, didn't make him feel secure. He has never formally owned anything. There is no deed of a home to his name or a car. It has always made him feel like a failure. Yet, all of this is his, the note, the first aid kit and especially the comatose boy with the bullet wound.

_You can't leave without asking me, you're mine._

'Dean…' Sam wraps his fingers around Dean's cold wrist and lies down next to him. He knows Dean's alive this way, can feel the agitated pulse. He doesn't want to ever let him go. He doesn't want morning to come. He wants Dean to stay with him while they both drown.


	3. Chapter 3

'Sam, you're hurting me,' Dean's voice, a faint crackle in the cold stillness of the unknown hour.

Sam's stunned awake, wondering how and why he's hurting his brother. He doesn't hurt Dean. Well, not intentionally at least. Actually, judging by the fact that Dean's shot himself because of what he's said, he does hurt Dean intentionally. Wait, that's sort of untrue. If Dean didn't do half the things he did, Sam wouldn't have to hurt Dean at all. Sometimes Sam likes to delve into the principalities and philosophy behind their various deeds. He'd say it all start outs with worthy intentions and ends in a way that makes you wish you never existed.

Maybe it's fate that they are still alive. Sure, it's a rather inimitable fate, but the Winchesters are all about being different. When Dean had no other way to reassure him, he'd say "it's our kind of normal." So not being brought back from the dead is highly freaky and illogical.

'Your arm,' Dean whispers, as if the words are treacle 'it's heavy.'

He's been sleeping somehow wedged into Dean's side, his arm thrown across Dean's chest.

'At least I kept you warm,' Sam thinks it's been five minutes since he performed casual surgery. When he sits up and looks at Dean, he knows it isn't. There aren't any windows in the room, but he can tell from Dean's startlingly pale face. He looks like he's going to die of hypothermia. The room isn't cold, so the wound might've caught an infection or he needs a blood transfusion, but Sam doesn't think it's either.

He checks Dean's pulse. It's faint but still alert and the wound is swollen, but not infected. Sam has seen enough of them to know. He wishes for the millionth time that he'd gone into the medical fraternity. He'd always been interested law, but now days all he uses it for is to get Dean out of scrapes. He'd use his medical knowledge for that too, come to think of it.

'I'll come back in a minute, alright?' Maybe some blood would help. The men of letters have a fridge labelled 'blood' which Sam thought incredibly unsettling, until Dean stacked it up. Then Sam agreed that it was a practical idea, and didn't like the thought that he didn't know how to be normal anymore.

Although, looking at Dean again, he doesn't look like anything can help him. He looks deader than he did last night.

'Why didn't you wake me up?' Sam snaps.

Dean's silent.

'Don't be ridiculous,' Sam glares at him, 'if I wanted you dead, I wouldn't go through all the trouble of stitching you up.'

That's the wrong thing to say. Dean drops his eyes and Sam thinks that the reason Dean hasn't said anything is because he's imagined Sam's words to be like the ones he's just heard. Of course Sam doesn't mean it, but it's the fact that Dean doesn't trust him after worlds of wounds. Sam would never leave him to suffer, never.

'You're an idiot to shoot yourself, you know that?' Sam spits out angrily. Dean doesn't respond, not because he can barely speak, but because he mostly doesn't lash out when Sam criticizes him. He chews on it until it becomes a mantra in his head and all his actions contort themselves to the few words Sam has said.

'You know what else?' Sam doesn't know why he's not helping fix his brother right now, but Dean can wait another few minutes since he's spent most of the night deliberately suffering and Sam is quite sure he doesn't know how to help Dean and it's making him rather nervous 'it hurts when you don't trust me! It really, really hurts.'

Dean's not looking at him in shame or he can't open his eyes wide enough. Sam hopes it's the first one, because Dean still doesn't understand him. After all these years, decades, hell and heaven, Dean still won't believe that when Sam said, 'you're my brother and I'd die for you' he meant it in every way possible.

Dean should trust him.

'What have I ever done to you that you think I'm a lesser individual than you? What is it? Is it the apocalypse? Is it the demon blood? Is it college? Is it the girls? Is it being soulless? Is it purgatory?' Sam's coughing out the words, 'because I've tried to fix it, God help me, I've tried so hard!'

Dean should have always believed in him.

'It was never about anybody else. I wanted you to know that even though you never had much,' Sam's almost yelling now, 'at least you could look at me and be proud that you'd brought up a good kid.'

One day Sam had decided that if Dad's indifference made Dean sad, he'd somehow try to make Dean happy. He swears that he tried. Sam thinks he probably won't be able to bear the way Dean broke after he left for Stanford, but it did hurt Sam that his brother wasn't in the least bit proud of him. It's a pain that cracks what's left of his heart into shards, every time Dean looks at him with aches of disappointment.

It had all stopped mattering a long time ago, because while Sam was trying to be 'a good kid' he'd ended up in more scruples then he could count. He's never made his brother happy. So now Dean doesn't like him but Dean still loves him, and that's so confusing.

'I used to always try to be the best for me,' he says sadly, 'I wanted to be the best for you too.'

Dean should've been able to see all of this. He won't, he can't, Sam doesn't know.

Maybe… Sam flinches. He hasn't been able to translate the 'you did it for you' any further. If Dean saved Sam for Dean, then Dean is the one who can't grow up. He has let Dean go, but Dean won't let him go.

It's suffocating and protective at the same time, like wearing a jacket in autumn. You don't know whether you should or should not take it off.

Nothing like this would've happened if Dean had just let him grow up. They would've been hunters but they would've been equals. Dean refuses to do that. Sam's still the kid brother. It doesn't matter what he does, short of painting the Impala fuchsia, Dean is still going to act like Sam's an enemy or a 6'4 orphan, either way Sam can't be trusted. Maybe he should paint the Impala.

Why, Dean trusts him so much that he'd actually think Sam won't save him when Sam is close enough to hear him murmur 'goodnight Sammy' through the wall.

'It'll never change, will it?' he wants to shout it in Dean's ear, so that Dean, by some miracle, can wake up and be new, but it sounds like a whimper. Sam should've shot himself. That would've been the right choice. Unlike Dean, he knows exactly where to place that bullet. Unlike Dean, he knows that he'll definitely not be allowed to die.

~SPN~

'Sammy?'

'Huh?'

'Hurts.'

'Where?!'

'Everywhere.'

Suddenly, he misses the stubborn 'I'm fine'. Sam doesn't know how to deal with 'everywhere'. Dean knows. Dean saved Sam's life at six months old and ever since. There have been those long ago fevers and flues, where curling up in Dean's lap was the best cure. Then there were coughs and sore throats, where 'Dean may I have some more honey water, Dean please read to me, Dean I don't like being sick.' When he was too grown up to be mollycoddled, Dean did it anyway, just less obviously. Sam was relieved Dean still sat next to him with whatever he needed and his constant cheerful company. Sam wondered if other sixteen year olds had brothers like his and was grateful he did. There were the vicious hunts and the burdens that came with it, and Dean was always there, either to save him or to fix it as best as he could.

College and being ill was when Sam knew that nobody had a brother like his. He had to get up and make his own tea, with what felt like the worst flu of his life. It felt sadder than having to go to the E.R.

Then there's after 'the other fire'. Dean's life is a litany of saving Sam. He hasn't always been successful but he's done it. Sam remembers smashing Dean's face in before he jumped into the cage, which was Dean's desperate attempt at trying to look after him. Then there are the trials, his brother continued asking and asking if he could help. Sam told him to quit the nagging. Sam didn't really want him to quit anything.

He wants Dean to take care of 'everywhere' while he hits the books and finds a cure. He can't do that now. He has to make Dean feel well and then he can go back to research or hunting or whatever it is that comes after 'looking after my brother.'

And like that, Sam becomes the little big brother, or so he thinks.

'Sam...' Dean's words, hiccups between caught breaths, 'you're not a good kid.'

'Do you want me to not help you Dean?' Sam can hardly believe Dean saying this now.

_'You're... you're awesome.'_

**Hi. Thank you so for reading & following & favorites. Um, if you'd be kind, reviews please? I'm wondering if I should continue?**


	4. Chapter 4

Sam's not sure when Dean stopped being a person and became a montage of the dark end of the Winchester legacy. John taught them to lie well, but Sam thinks he didn't know they'd be so fluent at it, that they'd turn themselves turn into an incoherent untruth. Sam can wear a rifle like he was born into an arena of camouflage. He can also shrug on a Ralph Lauren blazer as if he'd one day inherit an equestrian estate. He has worn, with all the grace he could grasp, the skins of angels and demons. He is an actor of most affluent experience. Yet, throughout it all, he has strove and succeeded to retain ribbons of the essence of Sam Winchester.

Dean wore nobody but himself and Dean drowned. Once, he wanted to be a fire fighter, because small boys like that kind of thing, the red hat and yellow coat, the siren sounds as he pushed the toy fire truck all around baby Sammy. Mary applauded him for it, like she would have done for all the other careers he'd discover in his childhood, because that's what moms do. She indulged her baby boy with supreme motherly advantage.

He was Mary's heart. Sam was a baby, as babies go and Dean had her eyes and their wild loveliness. Dean chatted about everything, mostly unintelligibly, but she understood everything. Dean was naughty and wonderful, and nothing else mattered. Then there wasn't a Mary, a home or a Dean anymore.

So he had to be like his dad, had to be a hunter and had to be Sam's big brother. They were all titles and Dean earned them, hitched up his shoulders in a leather jacket with sleeves that had to be folded. The bad boy persona was first a phase then a protector. The more he wore the jacket and drove the Impala too fast, dealt cards with old tattooed giants and acted like he didn't care, it became simpler to shrug on someone called Dean Winchester.

It was easy to deceive, easier to be accepted.

He did care though, still does, always will do. He used to be told it was a weakness which would corrupt his harsh profession and that he should switch it off, the way he quelled his emotions. Dean knows that no matter what any wiry hunter can say, it shouldn't be called weak. He considers it his strength. If he didn't care about his family, he's fairly certain he wouldn't be alive and they wouldn't be too.

Looking after Sam used to be his job and then it became his existence. He doesn't see different paths or choices when it comes to saving his brother. Demon or deals, death or destruction, there is everything else and then there's Sammy. Dean tells himself that as long as Sam's alive, it doesn't matter what Sam says to him.

It reminds him of a cruelly cold night where he had battered ribs and dad didn't spare a second glance at him, because he was worried about Sam. Dean wasn't supposed to mind. It is a route of memories, where Dean hurt and Sam stepped up stronger, and nobody cared.

As long as Sammy is alright, nothing else matters.

Since Sam has proclaimed his independence for the last time and it's about time Dean listened, he doesn't see why he should stay. The world doesn't need a reckless, poisonous person, the world doesn't want him. Most especially, his brother doesn't.

It's an endless, gasping loss inside him, that even if Sam didn't choose life, he also didn't choose Dean.

Sam wanted to hide his life because he thought everybody would be ashamed of it. Dean hid himself because he thought no one was interested.

When stars fell between the nightmares and desperately clutched knives wouldn't keep them away, he'd wonder if he would've been good at basketball (I'm not short), or seriously studied mechanics (not an aeronautical engineer, because planes are scary), or done something randomly interesting like be a chef (it's not girly) or write something, anything, because writing is completely not him.

What is him? What isn't him?

Dean wonders what it's like, being a person, where you're born with the right to just be.

He can't remember. He doesn't know.

Dean is a journey of scars.

~SPN~

Dean's laying on his bed, in a new t-shirt and an IV with the good painkillers, until Sam figures it all out. He knows the scars on Dean's chest are because the evil force of the blade is dissolving Dean from the inside, its power too ancient and deadly.

'It's okay Sammy' Dean taps his elbow.

'No Dean, it's not' Sam's says frustrated. Dean says it all the time. He should've stopped when Sam was old enough to understand that all things could not be fixed, that most matters scattered into millions of broken pixels. Still, Dean mumbles it through breakfast or a bloody mouth, the degree of danger doesn't matter because he knows it's a safe embrace for Sam although Sam will never admit it.

If Dean doesn't say it, Sam decides that the end is nigh. His heart rate will spike and he's pretty sure he'll be gone before Dean has. Well, if not in body then in spirit. It doesn't occur to him how much he unknowingly, emotionally wraps his heart around Dean's reassurances.

Dean's voice. Dean's words.

Dean is almost always nattering, he can't even watch TV without keeping quiet and he hardly says anything of much relevance, so Sam smiles and tunes him out. On the various, morbid occasions where either of them has died, Dean always manages to say something so wretchedly beautiful, it swirls a storm in Sam's heart.

It surprises him. He doesn't know where Dean gets it from, that crystallized, innocent emotion.

Dean isn't meant to be like that, he's all rude jokes and tough killer, so it doesn't sense. Sometimes Sam thinks he doesn't know his brother much. Maybe it's because Sam and Dad molded Dean the way they wanted him to be, the way it suited them most to their advantage.

We used you, brother.

'Remember what I taught you, Sammy.' Oh, that stayed in Sam's memory throughout that traumatic time in his life. Dean had taught him life and Dean wasn't here to teach him anymore, and there was nothing right about that.

'Jerk,' he says, under his breath, realizing Dean did it again with the note.

Dean looks at him impassively. It unnerves him. He learns most about Dean when he's dying. He looks so un-Dean. There's no wicked glimmer in his eyes, no sly smirk, no rule-the-realm shoulders and no world conquering smile, there's a boy with green eyes so painfully honest, Sam feels lost.

'It's okay Sammy' his brother would repeat, unfailingly. Even then, even when Dean is dying, he's still looking after Sam. Mary dying had to be the worst moment in Dean's life, but he wasn't screaming for his mom, he was looking after Sam.

It makes Sam feel safe and guilty.

'It'll be okay Dean,' Sam mumbles, not confidently, 'I'll…look after you.'

'No, you're wrong Sammy,' Dean coughs.

Sam glares at him.

'You haven't been my little brother for decades,' Dean fights against the painkillers, always struggles and wrestles with everything he can, 'how do you think I've survived this long? We've had our own regretful apocalypses' numbed lips slur over the troublesome word, tortuous times, 'but you've also had my back, been my big brother too.'

Sam's astonishment is a ring of silence.

'You don't have to feel guilty,' Dean's falling into an unreachable chasm, he can't fight it anymore, can't contend with the universe and its secrets, 'there was never any debt to pay'.

Sam doesn't know what to do suddenly. It's as if his purpose has fallen along with Dean. The constant thought that he's a disappointment to his brother never lets him really rest. Dean acknowledging him, almost thank him, free him from misconstrued, misunderstood bounds, he feels a whisper of peace.

_Sam's choice._

'Dean,' he runs his hand through Dean's hair, he's not sure if Dean feels it, but it makes him feel like his human amulet isn't melting, 'I love you more than most.'

* * *

**The End.**

**Wow...That finale. 'I'm proud of us'. Tears. Guest ah yeah, their both awesome & you made me :-)! Reviews please? Lovely people, thank you so!**


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